This week the students finished up their poems they wrote for the poetry unit. The poems were put into a large class book which is now available for the students to read during independent reading time. Each child also picked their favourite poem to read aloud and be videotaped. The video can be viewed at the end of this posting.
The class learned about advent calendars and how they are used in the Christian tradition to count the days to Christmas. We used the idea to create our own version of an advent calendar (adventus is Latin for arrival) to count the days to the winter holidays. The students created gift envelopes containing treats and surprises for each number. The star student picks a name of the child who gets the advent envelope for the day.
The class learned about the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and how a candle is lit on a menorah every day for eight days. They each helped to grate potatoes to make potato latkes. After they were fried they got to eat them with applesauce. The students learned how to play the dreidel game and how, the past they used "gelt" or money to play the game (we used little blocks but the children had a chance to try chocolate gelt coins).
After talking about the proper way to write a letter, each child wrote a letter to the Peace Crane Project in Hiroshima, Japan, to tell them about what our class and the Paper Engineering Club did to make 1,000 paper cranes for peace.
In guided reading, the groups read together the book, I'm Lying As Still As I Can. This book introduces the reasons why we aren't really completely still on earth. The earth rotates creating day and night. The earth travels around the sun on a 365 day trip creating a year. The solar system moves within the Milky Way Galaxy and galaxies are in the universe that is always expanding. Of course, gravity keeps us "stuck" on the earth so people don't realize all the different ways that the earth is moving.
In science, the children learned the names for their animal babies. Did you know that a baby rattlesnake is called a "snakelet"? Or a baby electric eel is called and "elver"?
In math, the students created their own survey questions to ask the children of the class. The students moved around the classroom to answer questions like "Do you have a pet?" and "Do you have a brother or a sister?" These results will be tallied and graphed next week.
Officer Jan from the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department visited our school this week to talk to all the grade two students about personal safety.
Our amaryllis plant is now almost 24 cm tall! It's become so big that we had to add more paper to our graph to show how big it is. We also have a "Christmas" cactus in the class that will soon bloom with bright pink flowers.
Here is our poetry video:
Books read aloud this week:
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams (finished)
Yancy and Bear by Hazel Hutchins
I Have a Little Dreidel by Maxie Baum
Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci by Joseph D'Agnese
Life-Size Farm Animals by Teruyuki Kamiya
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